Blogger Puts Congressional Aide’s Get Refusal In Context

Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is becoming the focus of a tough social media campaign, according to Fox News. Not for anything he himself has done, but for the refusal of his adviser, Aharon Friedman, to give his ex-wife a proper get.

Without a get she can’t start a new life with another Jewish man, which some have likened to domestic abuse. So now political Jews have decided to put the pressure on Congressman Camp, hoping for some trickle down pressure.

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They go on his Facebook page, leaving messages like “Give Tamar her freedom like every human deserves!”

There’s an online petition going on, too. What can I tell you, this Internet thing seems to be catching on with folks…

But I was curious to hear the man’s side (typical, right?) and found some explanation by Sarah Wildman on Huffington (what can I say, my curiosity is without boundaries). Wildman writes:

The Epstein-Friedman case is complicated. Friedman was granted a joint-custody agreement in the civil courts, one that gives him three weekends a month, but weekends that start at 6 p.m. In Philadelphia. On Friday nights. Which means, for a Sabbath-observant Jew, Friedman can’t really see his daughter until Sunday. That’s wrenching, that’s awful; that, many believe, is unfair. The kid is so far away to begin with – and Friedman, by all accounts, begged his wife to move back to the D.C. metro area so he can see the girl more.

So Friedman is holding back the get until he gets to visit his daughter. It’s messy and really shouldn’t go sooo public, which is why I’ve stayed away from it all this time. But now I saw a reason to touch it, to provide CONTEXT.

Now you can have your megaphone back…

You get the feeling the private and the public is getting a tad mixed here? just wondering…

Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and
two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.

2 COMMENTS

Suddenly this is a completely different story.
Now it sounds like his wife is using the daugher as a weapon to hurt her husband, and all he wants is his court-granted right to have her on the weekends, which she’s refusing.

This blogger did not do his homework thoroughly — custody was revisited and revised at the husband’s request and now there are no outstanding issues whatsoever.

Tehre was a “Declaration of Contempt” (seruv) issued against Aharon Friedman by the Rabbinic Court of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. The rabbinic judges examined all issues thoroughly and determined that Friedman has made his wife into an agunah. There are no excuses left.